Sometimes Words
by Bonsoir
Summary: FE7. Sometimes words just made things worse.


**Title:** Sometimes Words  
**Characters:** Hector, Eliwood, Farina  
**Genre:** Friendship, Romance, Angst  
**Words:** 1,396  
**Notes:** I'm not sure how I feel about this one. Kender made me post it anyway, though. So blame her.

* * *

Hector was a goddamned fool to love Farina; he was aware of that much—had _been_ aware of it for months. At first his reasoning had been simple: Uther would kill him. But then he'd learned that consumption had killed Uther, and that was when other doubts assailed him, doubts that forced him to weigh the pros and cons of starting the rest of his life with someone like Farina.

He had never cared about social ranking beyond the use he got out of it (because he _did_ enjoy ordering people around), but suddenly it mattered a great deal—_had_ to matter, because no one would take him seriously if he took over as Marquess Ostia and married a mercenary.

An Ilian mercenary with a sketchy past and trust issues.

He was a goddamned fool because he spent all the hours he was supposed to be sleeping thinking about her, considering, with some degree of seriousness, taking her back into the woods behind the camp just to fuck her absolutely senseless.

But all he ended up doing was talking; he took her behind Merlinus's supply wagon and held her hand, kissed her a little with the promise of something more if she returned to Ostia with him when everything was over. She agreed.

She fucking agreed.

And he told himself, _Hector, you're a fool_. And he thought, _Nobody will ever trust me to make responsible decisions again_.

And he considered telling her his doubts—that he did love her, and he wanted to be with her, but it was impossible and he didn't want to look like the bold, thoughtless dumbass that he knew he was in front of his dead brother's advisors.

He couldn't say it, in the end.

He didn't want to.

Did it matter if he married Farina or the daughter of a marquess?

Did it have to be his happiness or Ostia's? Couldn't it be both?

All he knew for certain was that he was a goddamned fool: a fool for trying to earn her trust, and a fool for loving her when he'd earned it.

It wasn't fair for him to have to choose between being completely selfless and being completely selfish.

* * *

Eliwood believed in both, said, "Come now, Hector, you can make it work." And, "I would pick Ninian. If I could. It doesn't have to be one or the other."

It was easy to say something like that when the decision wasn't staring you in the face, but if Hector had learned anything, it was that he should trust his friends. So he said, "I'll hold you to it." He said, "Thanks, Eliwood." And, "I'm sorry."

He hadn't realized how much Eliwood might like the chance to make a decision like that. Things seen in retrospect were always clearer, and Hector didn't want to end up like Eliwood—with no decision to make.

So the night before they reached the crumbling stone walls where Nergal had holed himself up, he brought Farina back to his tent. Sometimes words made things worse. Sometimes a person's warm breath against your hair and beating heart beneath your ear conveyed the same message. So they just held one another and neither one of them said a goddamned word to each other all night.

* * *

The army was picking through the rubble of Nergal's fortress several hours after the dragon had been defeated when Hector realized the burden of his choice had been lifted from his shoulders.

He wanted to say, "God, you're a mess," but it got stuck in his throat—painfully. He'd seen death a million times in the last year, but something about this one made him gag.

There was too much blood, but not enough—not enough to kill Farina. Farina, who had fallen to the ground in a dead faint only a month earlier from working herself too hard; Farina, who endured Ilian winters, who had gone without, who had said to him at least a thousand times that Murphy was a _pegasus_ and not a _horse_.

He didn't see Murphy at all.

But he saw Farina. And she was dead.

He picked her up, just in case—just in case she might groan and open her eyes and push him away because she was _just fine_ and she wasn't done fighting yet. She had to earn that twenty-thousand gold he'd paid her, after all, and there was no way in heaven or hell that she was giving him an excuse to take it back.

But she didn't move.

Florina shrieked and Hector thought it was the worst sound he'd ever heard in his life—the kind of sound he'd probably make if he could, but he was so calm, so _numb_, that all he could do was keep walking. Maybe it would hit him later and he'd make that same sound—of grief and loss and something else he couldn't quite place.

Nothing after that was very clear; he remembered more about what other people did than what he himself had done to pass the time. Fiora was undergoing healing and was unable to see her sister buried. Florina helped dig the grave, sniffling the whole time. Lyn spent several days limping around crying and Hector wanted to make fun of her for it but couldn't find it in himself to tease.

And Eliwood—

Hector avoided Eliwood.

He didn't know what to say to him. He didn't know what Eliwood might say in response. Sometimes words made things worse, after all, and Hector thought that not saying anything was better than ruining seventeen years of friendship.

He thought about Farina's last known words instead. ("If I have to save your stupid ass out there today, it'll cost you another twenty thousand gold!")

Thought about the little sigh she'd made just before falling asleep against his shoulder.

Thought about how he wished he had that choice to make again, because he would pick being completely selfish and he would never second-guess himself.

Hector had never been jealous of Eliwood, but now he was—because while Hector had flinched at the sound of Farina's body landing at the bottom of her grave, Eliwood had pressed his ear against Ninian's chest to feel the _ba-dump, ba-dump_ of her heart beating.

"I'm sorry," Eliwood tried to say when they were on board the _Davros_, but Ninian was standing only a few yards away, and Hector couldn't stand the sight.

"I need to be alone," was all he could manage to say, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Eliwood take Ninian's hand as he led her below deck. Eliwood understood the hurt, but Eliwood had Ninian back, now. Farina wasn't coming back. Hector didn't think anything he could think to say would be worthwhile.

"Hector?" Lyn tried, later.

He didn't need her pity and he certainly didn't want her attempt at understanding, so he shoved her away harder than he meant to and said, "Shut up."

It made her cry and that made him angry. "What do _you_ have to be crying about?" he demanded, but she didn't answer and ran off somewhere else and he _couldn't stop being angry about it_—about the fact that Lyn could cry her eyes out for someone she hardly knew, but Hector couldn't. Not even for the woman he loved.

He could only sit there and think about the what-ifs and the what-nows and the big, fat, terrifying why-not: why Ninian, who wouldn't live very long in the end, and not Farina, who had her whole life ahead of her?

When they docked in Badon the answers to Hector's questions still eluded him, and the last person he wanted to see was Eliwood, but he made himself speak to him when it came time for them to part ways.

A seventeen-year friendship had to mean more than a love affair of a handful of months—_it had to_. He had nothing else, now. And deep down, he knew that Eliwood understood.

This time, "I'm sorry," were Hector's words. And then, "You were wrong."

"About what?" Eliwood asked.

"You can't have both," he said. And then, "_I_ can't have both."

And maybe for the first time ever, Eliwood understood that sometimes words made things worse. So they held one another and they didn't say another goddamned word before going their separate ways.


End file.
